Diana Yates’s book describes how her garden became a larder, a source of home decoration and a place of restoration and healing
Garlic Scape Pesto
My first year growing garlic was a very stressful time indeed. I popped my carefully separated precious cloves into my well-prepared raised bed around mid-September and waited weeks… but nothing sprouted. Not a single one!
Come late February – over five months later! – I thought, that’s it, they’ve rotted, all 80 or so of them. A catastrophic fail! Lo and behold, when I’d all but given up hope I spied the first stubby green shoot popping up from an otherwise “empty” bed. Ten days later, I had a full bed of little green shoots rapidly on the rise. Well, my excitement was palpable. They made it through the first five months, so now only five months to go! Yes, it’s a slow-growing crop and you only know if you’ve successfully grown a decent-sized bulb once you lift them, so patience is key.
After that I got to experience one rewarding milestone after another in the world of garlic growing. First came what I can only describe as garlic gold. Garlic scapes! Those delectable, immature, flower-bulb stalks that shoot up from hard-neck garlic varieties (one layer of cloves around a hard central stem) around two to three weeks before the garlic bulb is ready to harvest. Well, I read that not only are they edible but delicious to boot! So I looked up a recipe online that led me to garlic scape pesto.
Since discovering the recipe, it’s become a midsummer must-have that’s loved by one and all in my house. I’ve tweaked the recipe a touch over time. Fewer pine nuts, a touch more olive oil and I do believe we have a recipe worthy of the sacred family recipe tin – a rather special tin that sits on the shelf above the range, where only recipes with the seal of approval make it.
To make this rare and simple summer delight, the first step is to harvest the scapes just after the stalks have curled round on themselves. They can be quite intense in flavour depending on the variety, so if you prefer a more subtle version, blanch the scapes whole in salted boiling water for around 30 seconds before popping them into a bowl with iced water to stop them cooking further. Then continue on with the recipe.
Ingredients (Serves 4 as a main or 6 as a light supper)
◆ 400g (14oz) or 12–18 roughly chopped garlic scapes – bulb and all if still immature
◆ 100g (3½oz) pine nuts
◆ 100g (3½oz) grated Parmesan
◆ 100g (3½oz) parsley
◆ 1–2 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
◆ A handful of basil leaves
◆ 250ml (2floz) olive oil
◆ Salt and black pepper, to taste
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